Multiple Blogs or Power Houses?
I’ve been thinking a lot on whether it’s a good idea as a publisher to focus on several smaller blogs, or try to build a real power house. In my opinion, it’s not an obvious choice for someone that wants in the new media publishing sphere.
On one hand, having a bunch of smaller blogs means that you can cross-link and -promote to launch new projects, as well as drive traffic from one blog to neighboring niches. That’s a good thing, and what blog networks such as b5media does.
So what’s the problem with this? Well, do you have enough energy and focus to really manage a bunch of blogs to an extent that they are successful? Chances are you’re spreading yourself thin, and that means that the blogs aren’t reaching their full potential. You might end up with a bunch of blogs sporting a few hundred visitors daily, which might or might not be enough for you.
On the other hand, if you build one (or a select few) power house blog, you can put all your focus on it, making it precisely as good as you can since there isn’t anything else competing with the time and energy you spend on it. This should result in a better publication, which in turn should be able to amass a whole lot more readers, and that means more money.
Then again, you’ll have a hard time to launch it since there isn’t a network of smaller blogs to promote it across. You might also be having a hard time to take it to the top notch level, since competition might be hard, and when you’re putting all your eggs in one basket you’ll have to generate a whole lot more than you do for each small blog if you go with the wider solution.
If you need to make $500 monthly, that’s $50/blog if you’ve got 10 smaller blogs, compared to actually making $500 on one power house.
I think the latter is harder.
On the other hand, becoming the #1 voice in a niche is pretty hard if you’re not being the best you can be, i.e. are spreading yourself thin, so if you want to achieve this power houses might be for you.
I don’t know what’s best. What do you guys think? Multiple blogs, or power houses? What’s your poison?
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I have two blogs, one with a specific topic, and one that has drifted between topics and is really just me saying whatever I feel like.
That feels like enough to me really as I struggle to come up with topics for just two.
By Andrew on December 11, 2007 1:56 am
Rubbish, Thord! My wife and I spread ourselves too thin over a number of blogs and enjoyed precisely no success. It wasn’t until we settled down and focussed on one ‘powerhouse’ blog that we started to see people becoming aware of our brand, linking back to us and – yes – enjoying better earnings through advertising.
One person can only do a finite amount of work and invest a finite amount of enthusiasm into multiple blogs. 10 blogs, even as a hypothetical, is a recipe for burnout.
By Gerard McGarry on December 12, 2007 10:50 am
Gerard, there are plenty of people out there who’s making money on managing a bunch of blogs, that’s a fact.
Let’s turn it around. Why didn’t it work for you and your wife, running multiple blogs?
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on December 12, 2007 10:13 pm
My case was (and is) a sort of evolutionary steps.
Started of with a all-in-one personal+technology+design+art blog. It had no direction. It had no good readership base as its topics varied. This was an attempt at becoming a power house blog but was executed poorly. But still, it did keep me interested in blogging.
Then I split up to multiple blogs – but got spread too thin. The blogs were focused on certain topics but it spread me too thin. Could not focus on anything. I was loosing interest in blogging.
Then, I brought them all back together, and only have additional blogs when the depth of my writings on a particular topic warrants it. At present, I am having three blogs.
A personal blog that records just about any topic.
A technology + design blog.
An art blog.
The setup is favourable to me. The personal blog keeps fueling and incubating my ideas. The blog post related to the topics of the other two blogs result in a well researched articles in them.
By Vyoma on December 13, 2007 11:32 am
Great post, thanks!
Also interesting comment from Vyoma, thanks again!
By Sandra on December 13, 2007 11:05 pm
Thord: Too many blogs, too much maintenance (comments, WordPress updates, design tweaks, etc), too much building backlinks for different sites.
Not enough time to write quality content on them all, build linkbait/social media compatible posts. Not enough time to track buzz in each niche and report on it. Not enough time to comment in other blogs in each niche and build reputation. Like Vyoma above, we were both ready to pack it all in even though blogging was the most fun thing at the start.
The current strategy is to continue working on the one domain/brand using subdomains to diversify into other niches while still keeping the brand awareness. I’m not saying that multiple blogs aren’t part of our strategy, but too many would wipe us out.
By Gerard McGarry on December 14, 2007 6:32 am